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When Amazon's stock spiked, Jeff Bezos's net worth increased $13.2 billion in just 15 minutes. Also, 7 other things worth a click.

Feb 3, 2020

Jeff Bezos's net worth went up $13.2 billion in just 15 minutes last week.

I mentioned this in passing Friday, but it stuck with me over the weekend (and not for lack of other things going on). I think it’s worth a deeper look.

The boost is because of the increase in Amazon's stock of course: more than 7 percent in a single day as a result of an amazing earnings report.

It's dipped back down a bit since, as these things tend to do. Easy come, easy go.

But still.

Let's talk about $13.2 billion:

Roughly half the annual gross national product of Cambodia, with its 15.2 million people.
A bit shy of twice the annual GNP of Haiti, which has 11 million people.
More than President Trump's total net worth. (Maybe more than 2X, if the president's off-the-cuff statement last summer that he'd lost $5 billion since becoming president was rooted in fact.)
Enough to buy a nice dinner for every single person in the United States (at $40 per person).
Enough to buy an Amazon Echo Dot for every American, and still have about $3.5 billion leftover.

Granted, SOMEBODY has to be the wealthiest person in the world. So, it weren't Bezos, who is 100 percent self-made, and whose company employs 750,000 people, it would be somebody else.

But still.

There's a video that went viral last week.

Well, maybe not viral, exactly; we're not in TikTok territory, with somebody eating a chocolate and finding a Peppa pig inside. But let's just say it was popular.

It’s from CBS Sunday Morning and my old friend Tony Dokoupil, who was trying to see if people could wrap their heads around wealth inequality.

So, he headed to a local mall (I think it’s in New Jersey) and asked shoppers to cut up a pie (looked like pumpkin pie), and serve it on five plates. The idea was that the five quintiles of wealth in the United States would each be allocated their real-life proportional share.

Short version:

the top 20 percent get almost everything;
the bottom 20 percent get less than nothing (because they have a negative net worth), and
almost nobody in the mall who tries to divvy it up gets it right.

(Here’s the video.)

I’ve written these things before for Inc., trying to put absurdly big numbers in perspective, and judging from the response I get, people appreciate them. So let’s try it here.

Imagine that a single dollar sign: “$” represents a briefcase full of $1 million in cash, like you might see in the movies.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say they’re very big briefcases that could hold $1 million (you’d need 10,000 individual $100 bills, weighing about 22 pounds).

Now, imagine that for some strange reason that Bezos decided to take his 15-minute earnings, convert them to cash, and store it all in 13,200 briefcases.

It would take this many briefcases. (This will seem like it never ends, but trust me.)

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I don’t begrudge Bezos his fortune. It's much more complicated than that.

He not only built Amazon from the ground; it’s striking to realize he’s now getting into the territory of the longest-tenured CEOs anywhere: more than 25 years.

Plus, while he’s the very definition of the top .1 percent—well, it’s all relative.

I think I’m probably in the world top 2 or 3 percent by net worth. I’ll bet a lot of readers are, too. (In terms of income, just $32,400 a year will put you in the global 1 percent.)

This isn’t me bragging; just trying to be grateful and acknowledge that I’m doing OK. I'd make a pretty lousy poster child for storming the barricades.

Heck, by my reckoning I've probably made at least $50,000 from Amazon over the years—mostly from running some small affiliate content sites, to say nothing of writing about the company (and Bezos himself) for places like Inc.com.

And, I'm glad Bezos bought The Washington Post on a whim and kept it going, even though I had left before that.

I have friends and colleagues who still have jobs and are doing great work because of that.

But still.

That’s a heck of a lot of briefcases for 15 minutes.

7 other things worth a click

The Kansas City Chiefs won a thrilling Super Bowl Sunday night. Meanwhile, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, at ages 43 and 50 respectively, pulled off a halftime show people will probably be talking about for years. (NBC News—video)
It seems like we’ve already run a marathon, but we’re just at the starting line: the Iowa caucuses are today. (NPR)
And the president’s State of the Union address is tomorrow. (Associated Press)
Apple rolled out its new version of the Maps app, after seven long years of development. (Me, on Inc.)
Video supposedly leaked of Samsung’s new folding smartphone. (The Verge)
All the big U.S. airlines announced they will suspend flights to China. (Me, on Inc.)
What it’s like to be the only doctor for 11,000 square miles. (The Washington Post … this is actually from last September but I just read it; it’s very good.)

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When Amazon's stock spiked, Jeff Bezos's net worth increased $13.2 billion in just 15 minutes. Also, 7 other things worth a click.

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